The story of the LGBTQ+ civil rights movement does not begin at the Stonewall Inn. Across the country, groups like the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis had been organizing queer people and agitating for our rights since the early 1950s; demonstrations like the Compton’s Cafeteria riots in San Francisco and The Black Cat bar protest in Los Angeles saw queer and trans people gather against police intimidation and raids on our community years before June, 1969. Yet it was Stonewall that catalyzed a movement that had been growing for decades, bringing a new level of visibility to our community’s fight for recognition and equality. And it is impossible to tell the story of the 50 years that have followed without talking about visibility.
In the years following Stonewall, early pride marches began bringing together thousands of queer people and allies for gatherings that would make it well known, from chants in city streets to the pages and screens of newspapers and TV, that we were here and proudly queer. As ACT UP’s rallying cry would proclaim in the late 1980s and 90s, “Silence = Death,” and their inescapable, shocking protests and activist actions would become key to fighting back against government, medical, and media inaction as the AIDS crisis raged. Visibility, in the form of gatherings at the White House steps and mass weddings, would help precipitate national marriage equality in 2015, an unthinkable achievement back in 1969. Today, a revolution in LGBTQ+ visibility is taking place across media, in American corporations, and our halls of government, the culmination of 50 years of voices raised and peace disturbed. This unprecedented visibility is sometimes a double-edged sword, especially as we combat new forms of discrimination and queerphobia under the Trump administration. But it is mind-boggling to consider how far we have come over the past 50 years, and the bravery and labor of the millions of LGBTQ+ people who got us to where we are today.
Pride: Fifty Years of Parades and Protests, out today from Abrams Image, collects photos and coverage from the archives of The New York Times documenting these moments and more. To take in the breadth of its contents — to see the scope of LGBTQ+ rights, from the first Christopher Street Day march in 1970 to protests for transgender rights just last year — is to witness the power of visibility firsthand. Below, 14 photos from the book survey the past 50 years of queer liberation, and the people who helped get us where we are today.
